Amarillo, Baby

Boy, I tell ya, I’m beat down like a pinata on Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles on a…ehhhh, forget it. I’m too tired to make witty analogies today. This post is about the illustrious Amarillo trip that the band had been looking forward to for months now, and in a lot of ways it didn’t disappoint. But first, allow me to educate you on something.

For those of you who don’t live in the great state of Tay Hass, you have no idea of the sheer size of this place. It’s huge. Amarillo is technically still in Texas, but it’s so far away, it might as well be in Cuba. We drove for 6 hours to get there, and we neither started at an edge nor ended at one. Texas is HUGE. We left Dallas around 10:30 on Friday, and got into town around 4:30 or 5. We went straight to the club to check in with the owner, unloaded our gear, then went to the hotel to check in there. That’s when we met our first bout of trouble.

Obviously, this hotel has had bands booked there before, so seeing our motley crew arrived shouldn’t’ve been a big deal, but evidently we rolled in like some invading Huns looking to pillage a village, ’cause we got attitude from the instant we got into the lobby. We had been told there were 3 rooms booked for us, so our drummer said “3 rooms for Nonetheless”. The battleaxe at the desk immediately jumped bad on her, saying “There’s only TWO rooms!” This attitude would pretty much set up the weekend. We checked in, went back to the club to do a sound check, then went BACK to the hotel to change clothes and relax before the show.

The bar owner told us that the crowd doesn’t usually come in till about 10:30 or 11pm, so when 11:30 rolled around and the joint was nonhoppin’, we were concerned. We found out later that a couple of new clubs opened up that same weekend, with live music, which sapped our expected audience tremendously. And you know, we’re professionals (no seriously, we are — we get paid and everything), but it’s a struggle to really get INTO it when there’s only 3 or 4 people who are paying you any attention. On both nights, we played three sets, and by the third set, we had the place rockin’, but that first set was like pulling teeth each night. At any rate, we did well enough on Friday that we had several people come back out to see us on Saturday. Including a fun little lady I like to call Aunt Skank.

Now, Aunt Skank was the hotness. She was somewhere between the age of 45 and 65 – and really, it was very hard to tell because reptilian skin just doesn’t age the same as human. She further confused the carbon dating by dressing like a Lindsay Lohan wannabe with a splash of Britney Murphy and Cher. I’ll say this once, twice if you’re hard of hearing: if people can’t tell if you’re 45 or 65, do NOT EVER WEAR anything SEE-THROUGH!!! There is nothing inside that camisole that I would ever want to see, even if there was a treasure map tattooed on your chest. She was accompanied by a man who was at least 15 years her junior, and looked like he lost a huge bet that he just KNEW he’d win, like taking a 3 legged cat in a race over a turtle, not knowing the turtle had a jet pack in his shell. Cheating motherfucker. He guided her around, using her frail and freckled arm as a leash to keep her from attaching herself like a barnacle to anyone who even grunted in response to the outlandish shit she was spewing. At one point on Friday, she cornered me in between sets when all I wanted in life was a cold beer, and clutched my arm and went on and on about trees and 1965 and music in Amarillo and God knows what else, because 3 sentences in, I was eyeballin’ my arm, wondering if I could chew it off coyote-style and still play bass later. She was a hot mess.

On Saturday, she came back with her handler/date/parole officer, probably because she’s on the banned list at every Family Dollar and Big Lots in town, ready to party. And the funny thing was, we happened to have one planned. Our initial idea was to slyly go around to certain folks at the club and tell them, on the down-low, that we were going to whoop it up back at the ho-tel after the show. And that would’ve been a GREAT plan, but Jmart (I love you, dawg) got on the mike in the second set (or was it the third? Fuck if I know – I was drinking, and I wasn’t driving) and announced to the whole joint that we were gonna throw down after the show. THANKS, J! Since there were only about 40-odd people there, it was easy to spot her, jumping up and down, jiggling parts that should never, ever jiggle. God save us. After the show, the owner unexpectedly asked us to load up that night, rather than allowing us to come back on Sunday to load up, so we figured in the hour or so between when the show finished and when we showed up at the party would give Aunt Skank’s Metamucil enough time to kick in, and she’d go on home.

Wrong.

We packed up and rolled over to the hotel, a lo and behold…there she was, chillin’ in Gordie’s room with her nephew/cousin/boyfriend/all of the above. When we walked in, two other people waved me down and said “HEY! Ol’ Girl here brought some Mad Dog and Boone’s Farm for the party. Want some?” Yeah, no. I settle in with the beer I brought, and the party was underway — for about 10 minutes. That’s when hotel management showed up. It would seem that the other hotel residents weren’t too happy about a band party at 3:30am, shockingly. The assistant manager didn’t fuck around – she went straight to the “kick you out and call the cops card”, which pretty much trumped anything we had. We stood up and said “Party’s over, folks!” By and large, everyone understood, and left in a nice, orderly fashion. Except for one person.

Aunt Skank.

See, she was ready to par-tay, and was none too pleased that the party was over before she could crack the seal on that Mad Dog. In fact, while everyone else was thanking us and filing out, she decided that that moment was the PERFECT time for a public referendum on the legality of breaking up a party at a hotel. This crazy broke-down bitch stood out on the balcony and started SCREAMING at the top of her lungs! “Nobody tells ME when it’s time to leave! I’m a grown woman! Fuck you! Fuck you! Don’t touch me, get off me! This is BULLSHIT! I leave when I WANNA leave! All y’all can come back to my house! I live in a trailer in a trailer park, and we can ALL go back there RIGHT NOW and party all night! Fuck this place! Who wants to go with me back to my trailer and party? Let’s go!” Imagine hearing this at top volume from the most redneckian (jot that down) 4 packs a day voices that you could only imagine in a Dukes of Hazzard nightmare dreamscape. At this point, we wanted this bitch gone like a case of the crabs, and her handler looked like a beaten, broken man. I pity him if he has to copulate with her, but he really should’ve bet on the turtle.

She finally left, and after more scuffles with the assistant manager (who made sure to tell us that she was the “motherfucking assistant manager here”), things settled down for the night. All in all, it was a good trip. OH! Jmart’s girlfriend apparently lost her phone the next day, right before we left, and someone APPARENTLY found it because on the whole 6 hour drive back, I was getting messages from her lost phone.

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9 comments

So DD, your saying there is a down side to being in a band? I’ll wager that the applause at the end makes it all worthwhile.
Loved your latest Badger the Witness show. does Elle really sound like that when driving?